FOCUS ON HEROIN DEALERS IN SUBSIDIZED HOUSING UNITS

Medina Police are using a coordinated enforcement strategy in an effort to address the rise in heroin drug overdoses in our area. The police are partnering with the subsidized housing community to identify and rid subsidized housing of the drug dealers and abusers in the Medina version of “Broken Windows.”

“Clean it up, enforce your rules and we’ll enforce the law,” said Medina Mayor Dennis Hanwell. “The goal of the subsidized housing program is to provide a safe and secure environment for the families, not to subsidize drug trafficking.”

“We started with Union Square Apartments, in the past one of our biggest problem areas. We meet regularly with their management team,” said Chief Patrick Berarducci. “One of the advantages of our technology is we can easily identify problem units and problem people. We share our information.”

We encourage the property management team to use the tools at their disposal such as trespass notices and evictions to remove the problem people from their property and then we support them with concentrated enforcement actions.

Those enforcement actions have resulted in five drug arrests since July 1 by the Medina County Drug Task Force and officers of the Medina Police Department. They are:

An additional warrant for Randy Tuttle, charging him with robbery, was signed by Medina PD based upon information developed by DTF agents. This charge stems from an incident which occurred at the Union Square Apartments on June 29th, 2014 and is unrelated to his previous warrant.